Former students, staff, faculty and friends of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary will remember their school and celebrate its unanticipated broad influence during a reunion at Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C., Aug. 15-16.
“From Seminary to Society: Journeys of Legacy, Loss and Hope” will be the theme for the event. That focus will prompt participants to experience bittersweet memories of “something lost, something gained,” noted Linda McKinnish Bridges, one of the event’s organizers.
Linda McKinnish Bridges and Tilden Bridges
Participants at the gathering will have strong connections to the “old” Southern Seminary, which existed prior to the so-called fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1990s, said Bridges, who earned two degrees from the seminary and taught there before embarking on a varied academic career elsewhere.
For generations, the seminary had been a Baptist bastion of moderate/progressive thought and leadership. But the school turned in 1993, when its longtime president, Roy Honeycutt, retired. Al Mohler, a former Honeycutt protégé who campaigned for the presidency by touting the seminary’s early Calvinist roots and firmly aligning himself with the SBC’s new fundamentalist leadership, succeeded him.
Consequently, many faculty began to leave, students and alumni mourned, and the seminary marched rapidly and steadily to the right.
“Some of us have worked hard to forget Southern Seminary,” McKinnish Bridges acknowledged. “We chose not to spend time pondering the pain of losing our jobs, being ostracized because of our gender, not being included because of the color of our skin, or being fired from our positions simply because we refused to sign the mandated documents. Many of us left, and we deliberately chose not to look back. We have kept moving, as fast as we could.”
Organizers hope the reunion will provide an opportunity for healing and gratitude.
But organizers hope the reunion will provide an opportunity for healing and gratitude.
In addition to lamenting their sense of loss, participants at the reunion will recognize the influence of the seminary’s diaspora — how faculty and students alike ventured into opportunities for ministry that might not have been imagined if the seminary had not been taken over, McKinnish Bridges predicted.
The group will “celebrate the theological formation we received at one of the largest seminaries in the world, and how, in leaving, we shared that work with so many places, even while serving as leaders in exile,” she said.
They also will “see if we can use our experiences at SBTS to understand this hauntingly familiar national takeover we find ourselves in right now,” she added.
On a more personal level, the event will provide former students and colleagues an opportunity to honor the legacy of Bill Leonard, who taught church history at Southern Seminary for 17 years, then taught at Samford University before becoming the founding dean of the Wake Forest School of Divinity.
Bill Leonard
“I began teaching at SBTS in August 1975 — that’s 50 years ago this month,” Leonard recalled. “I taught there until January 1992, when I joined what became something of a mass faculty exodus due to transitions in school and denominational leadership.
“During those 17 years, I benefited from a variety of faculty and student mentors who shaped my teaching, research, writing and spirituality dramatically.
“I am deeply grateful to the group of SBTS alums who took the initiative to organize this reunion and look forward to the opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the contributions Southern Seminary has brought to our lives. I am also grateful for the opportunity to teach at Samford and Wake Forest universities after leaving SBTS.”
The reunion is the brainchild of two Southern Seminary alumni whose exiles led them into the Episcopal Church, McKinnish Bridges said. Brian Cole is bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee, and Scottie Stamper is director of adult formation at Christ Church in Charlotte, N.C.
In addition to McKinnish Bridges, Leonard, Cole and Stamper, others who helped organize the event include Southern Seminary alums Rob Anderson, Perry Hildreth and David Key. Corey Walker, dean of the Wake Forest School of Divinity, provided the setting for the gathering.
The reunion will begin at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15, with a reception dinner in Reynolda Hall, the university’s administration building. On Saturday, Aug. 16, it will resume at 9 a.m. with breakfast in the School of Divinity building and will continue through communion after lunch. On Saturday, Leonard will preach, and Cole will lead the Eucharist.
Participants are encouraged to bring memorial objects from their Southern Seminary years.
Registration is open through Sunday, Aug. 10. To register, click here. If you have difficulty with the registration link, email Catherine Jackson-Jordan at [email protected].
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